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Talk:Criminal law in the Marshall Court

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Good articleCriminal law in the Marshall Court has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
August 6, 2012Good article nomineeListed
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on May 17, 2012.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that under the criminal statutes in force during US Chief Justice John Marshall's tenure, slave trading was a misdemeanor but insurance fraud was punishable by death?


GA Review

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Criminal law in the Marshall Court/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Lord Roem (talk · contribs) 23:41, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Read-through comments

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Background

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  • Maybe need a transition sentence from the Federalist papers Hamilton quote to the Constitutional Convention line. Obviously one leads to the other, but transitioning it more directly would improve the paragraph's clarity.
  • "and exclusive jurisdiction over all other federal crimes" - are these the ones you mentioned earlier, or not?
    • I'm not sure I see the source of the misunderstanding. The exclusive jurisdiction was only over crimes that the district courts couldn't try (thus: "exclusive"). So, not. Savidan 14:02, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Any interesting/noteworthy examples of "single-subject criminal statutes"?

Sources of jurisdiction

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  • Before going into examples of the use of the 'writ of error', could you write a brief description (either here or in the lead) of what it is? I have a rough idea of it... but something more substantive would be helpful.
  • You include a pretty massive chunk of the dissent in Bollman. Entirely necessary?
    • I didnt include any of the dissents argument in the merits, really. Only the fact of the dissent, the identity of the dissenters, amd the explanation of the retroactive dissent in Burford. Due to the rarity of pulished dissents during this period, I consider any dissent notable. As for the blockquote, I suppose it could be replaced, but I like the way he worded it and think it tells much about the deliberative process of the court during this period. Savidan 14:18, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just curious why you have Prof. Freedman's opinion here on the issue of section 14. Any other scholarly opinions on this question?
    • there probably are others that i would include in the Bollman article. Since Friedman is the only one who devotes this much coverage to the issue, afaiaw, I think it is fair to summarize his views only. Savidan 14:22, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the subsection on Ex parte Watkins, you explain what "capias ad satisfaciendum" was, but not "capias pro fine". Those aren't well-known writs, so a short description would help the context of this section.

Defining federal crimes

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  • I think it would be preferable to explain in clear terms what an "assimilative crime" is, rather than post the whole paragraph trying to define it. Essentially, I feel a shorter description is sufficient.
  • Hmm. Including a whole paragraph on the 1948 amendment on this subject seems to fall outside the scope of the article. Additionally, the quote from Sharpnack is difficult to understand; it has a ton of big vocabulary in it. The average reader may not know what's going on there.
  • Does any professor argue or does any other law review article discuss, the issue about federal common law crimes?
    • of course yes. Ive chosen this article because of the depth of treatment and because it contextualizes the topic to the marshall court era. The intent was not to take on the whole topic of common law crime, only to explain the minimum context of the marshall court's specific contribution. Savidan 16:32, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the 'False statements' section, if you're going to include that "Justice McLean dissented", I want to know what was interesting or noteworthy about his dissent.

Criminal procedure

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General comments

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  • I think the research in this article is incredible, and it is extraordinarily comprehensive. After addressing the few points I brought up, I'd be glad to promote this to GA.
-- Lord Roem (talk) 02:16, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for responding to my comments. I think you've addressed my small concerns; I'm moving to promote this to GA status. Good job with this article. Hoping the best with your bar results, Lord Roem (talk) 01:30, 6 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]